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Writing term papers and essays is part of the college experience, whether you like it or not. These open-source apps can help you organize your sources and get your writing done, as well as present your work with style. These apps are free, cross-platform (including Linux), and will help take the stress out of writing papers, whether you’re running Linux, macOS, Windows, or something else.
5Calibre
If you’re doing research for a paper, you’re increasingly likely to be working with electronic sources. You might get them from the internet or your college library. E-books are an important part of research, includingPDFandEPUBformats.More people are making the switch from paper to digital books, even in academic titles.
If you’re looking for a cross-platform app to manage your e-book collection, you should check outCalibre.
Not only can you store your e-books within Calibre, but you can also convert them to other formats. If you want to read your sources on a Kindle, an iPad, or an Android tablet, you can just use Calibre to do it. An interface like that might feel more comfortable than trying to read e-books on your computer.
4LibreOffice Writer
Once you’ve collected your source material, you’re going to have to sit down and write your paper.
Most of your classmates will likely be writing in Microsoft Word. The computers on your campus will likely have it installed, and your school might have a Microsoft 365 subscription. But what if you don’t have a copy of Microsoft Office on your machine and don’t want to pay for it?
LibreOfficemay be just what you’re looking for. It includes office tools like a spreadsheet and a presentation program, but for your term paper, the LibreOffice Writer is what you’re most interested in.
You can do the same things you would use a word processor for, including composing your text and adding headers and footers for page numbers according to the paper format you’re following. The best part is that you can save your paper in the Word format, which is great if you’re submitting your final paper as an email attachment. If your instructor requires a Word document, you can use LibreOffice Writer instead, and no one will be the wiser.
I have experience with its precursor, OpenOffice.org. I actually used a macOS-native port called NeoOffice. My student days were long enough ago that macOS was still called Mac OS X at the time, but I’ve used LibreOffice for my professional work when I need a local word processor successfully. It’s beingused by real government agencies in Europe, so you know this is a serious program for serious work.
I’ve submitted professional work using LibreOffice to a client that required .doc files, and they accepted them without complaint, so I can vouch for LibreOffice’s compatibility. LibreOffice could work for you because term papers tend to follow standardized formats and don’t get too fancy with weird fonts.
3Zotero
One of the most challenging parts of writing a research paper is keeping all your sources organized. Whether you’re using books, articles, or web sources, you’ll need some way of remembering the sources. You’ll also need to create a bibliography or works cited page for most assignments.Zoterois one tool that makes all of this easier.;
This was an app that I’d used toward the end of my college career because it was so easy to take care of the housekeeping tasks while writing papers for my classes.
Zotero is a cross-platform program that lets you create a database of all of the sources you’re using for your paper. You can set up records for books, academic journal articles, news articles, and other sources. You can insert references and footnotes right into most popular word processors, such as Microsoft Word. It also works with LibreOffice, mentioned above.
Zotero eliminates much of the drudgery associated with citations required for research papers. You can insert references for most popular citation styles, including Chicago or Turabian style, MLA, and APA, with the right page numbers. You can also automatically generate a works cited or bibliography for your paper when you’re finished.
The great thing about Zotero is that you don’t have to worry about the minutiae of citation styles in your papers. You can just concentrate on writing a good, properly-sourced paper and let Zotero take care of the details. Taking the pain out of citations and bibliographies was what attracted me to Zotero toward the end of my college days. I would recommend it after trying it out again for this article, even though my main citation style these days is a hyperlink rather than a formal style like MLA.
2Joplin
Although I’m coming back to some of these tools after I’d originally used them when I was in college, I useJoplinall the time for my work. This is an app that didn’t exist when I was in college, though I wish it did.
Joplin is an electronic notebook app that’s similar to Evernote, but there are a couple of important differences between Evernote and Joplin. The latter is free and open-source. I used to use Evernote until they kept jacking up the price and making it effectively impossible to use on different devices. Joplin is free of charge to use.
The best feature is its ability to sync. It has a native optional syncing service. You don’t have to use it if you don’t want to. I would probably want to avoid it since I’m in the US and the price on the website is listed in Euros. I do choose to sync it with Dropbox, since I have a free account. The sync messages can get annoying when it updates the files, so I often mute the messages in the Dropbox client.you may also self-host itif you want to.
Zotero is useful for creating outlines of your papers. While I don’t write research papers anymore, I do need to keep track of my ideas for articles like the one you’re reading. I maintain a list of article ideas, and when I have an idea I want to pitch, I can create an outline.
you’re able to use Joplin to create an outline of the topics for your paper, and you can create the outline for the paper once you’ve decided what you want to write about.
There’s an optional plugin that you can use in your browser to “clip” web pages. This can be useful for keeping track of sources, such as in Zotero.
Apart from research papers, Joplin would be handy to have to take notes in regular lectures. I appreciate that, like a lot of other apps in this list, it’s cross-platform. I use the Android version when I’m away from my computer for quickly jotting down ideas and creating to-do lists.
1LyX
Most word processors are made for formatting text for printing.LyXis different. LyX is based on LaTeX, a typesetting language widely used in science and math, piggybacking on the TeX language designed by the legendary Stanford computer scientist Donald Knuth. LaTeX can generate some beautiful output, but it can be hard to use if you’re not used tomarkup languageslike HTML.
LyX is about as close as you’re able to get to aWYSIWYG interfacefor LaTeX. It looks like a word processor you may be used to, but you’re focused on the structure of the paper you’re creating. This would be useful if you’re writing a paper in a math-heavy field like physics or computer science. Or you could just use it for your English class and impress your professor, making them wonder if you have a print shop in your dorm room.
If you’ve got a term paper assigned and are stressing over getting it started or completing it, these apps should help make things easier. They’ll be easier on your wallet since they’re free, and nearly any student can appreciate that.
